


Nothing much changes

by lucius_complex



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-10-09 23:17:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20518076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucius_complex/pseuds/lucius_complex
Summary: Nothing much changes, even after end times comes and goes. And Crowley’s not sure if that’s a terrible comfort, or a terrible rub.





	1. Chapter 1

**Nothing Much Changes**

_by Lucius Complex_

1

From the outside, Aziraphale’s bookshop is so well restored that one cant tell the difference between the old one and new. It must have taken a damned number of Miracles, possibly a migraine or three, so Crowley takes a moment to appreciate the angel’s painstaking efforts – seeing as nobody else can – before gently pushing open the door. In the late afternoon the interior is dimmer than usual, curtains filtering in one last burst of dying daylight that seems to concentrate upon the sunken velvet couch that Aziraphale favours and is currently ensconced in, squinting into his mobile phone. 

Crowley leans cross-legged against the doorjamb and watches the light playing off the angel’s absurd hair, dust motes shining in the air, much as he’s done for the last millennia... and the last. And the one before that. Nothing much changes between them, even after end times comes and goes. And Crowley’s not sure if that’s the comfort, or the rub.

But then Aziraphale finally looks up, eyes crinkling with startled pleasure._ ‘Dear_ Crowley,’ he says, and there’s enough fondness there, enough welcome, to make him take that last step through the periphery. 

_Dear_ Crowley, the angel always says, and that too never changes; is as immutable, as _ineffable_ – as the warmth that never fails to suffuse him, basking briefly in such positive regard.

Crowley knows he craves this knowing; this certainty that _Dear Crowley_ will always fall from Aziraphale’s lips. That he would always have this: 

But can he today? After all that’s happened between them, _to _them? Can Crowley bear the knowledge that nothing’s changed?

‘Angel. Good job with the place.’ Crowley waves a hand at the interior. ‘I see you’ve.. redecorated.’

The angel’s face had a tendency to light up with pleasure at the barest of compliments. ‘Well, I made a few changes, the curtains used to be blue you know, and I thought how about a bottled green velvet –‘

‘How terribly risk taking of you,’

‘I even got rid of the tassels you hated so much.’

The demon tries not to roll his eyes at this reference of the fossilised tassels that the angel picked up back in the 17th century, likely from the Passementier’s Guild. ‘Very contemporary,’ Crowley praises, and smiles slyly. ‘I’m awed by your increasingly bold forays into modern life.’ 

‘Well actually; speaking of bold. I’ve just found this new delightful new application called Ubereats and it’s a bit like watching humans Miracle food for themselves-’ Aziraphale launches up from his couch enthusiastically, almost bouncing on the balls of his feet with nervous energy. ‘You just pick a restaurant and everything you want and give it your address, and it even arrives piping hot!’

‘Like a real miracle.’ Crowley mummers, el-sotto. 

‘Precisely! Except with a lot more typing... But we can’t have everything.’ Aziraphale brightens as Crowley raises an eyebrow; ‘So anyways. Instead of picking a restaurant, I took the liberty of ordering in for both of us tonight. Something to go with the nice red Chianti I’ve been saving-’

‘Angel, I thought you love going out.’

‘Of course I do my dear, it’s just that – well its been a bit overwhelming hasn’t it? Besides, I’ve discovered that with this mobile method we can try several restaurants all at once, and of course, nobody to overhear any, ah, unsuitable bits of conversation between us.’ Aziraphale says all this very earnestly, as if presenting an appeal at one of his Heavenly meetings. ‘I do hope you won’t object to a night of staying in together, Crowley.’

What’s a demon to say? It is absolutely everything he wants; it has nothing he wants in it.

‘I don’t object to an evening in your home,’ Crowley drawls, even as he wonders how after all this time Aziraphale still manages that effortless combination of holding out the world to him, yet offering nothing. 

‘Splendid, splendid.‘ He watches Aziraphale make a nervous, abortive gesture with his hand. ‘Do you want a different drink? Or brighter lights? I’m not sure what’s more.. your thing,’ the angel breathes.

Crowley quirks his lip, allowing his eyes to warm in degrees as reward. _Your thing_. His angel hadn’t been so brazenly colloquial before the Event: look at him now, saying things like _Ubereats _and _your thing._ Such strange creatures freedom makes of all of us.

‘Relax, Angel,’ he says. ‘You already know I’ll eat anything you put in front of me.’

‘Wonderful!’ The angel clapses his hands together and bustles for the kitchen. ‘I’ll just get us an early start into the Chianti, shall I?’

Waving a hand in the face of his angel’s determined merry making, Crowley sinks down on the new-old couch, which greets him in the customary way; by raising a cloud of dust. It clearly hates him just as much as its predecessor did.

He looks around the bookstore, each item as familiar as their history together. He catches sight of the dog eared copy of Herodotus’ Histories he’d shelved upside down in a temper after an argument about geography – which Aziraphale has now actually recreated upside down. He remembers the day the angel unearthed the brass dog head walking stick at a horribly rainy car boot sale he’d dragged Crowley to, which had lied beside the poker ever since. 

Perhaps this is as much change as creatures like them can expect. A demon can’t help but want to push for _more_, but perhaps-

Perhaps this is it. 

Besides, he’s been sitting on his own hands for six thousand years. What’s another thousand? Or ten?

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Nothing Much Changes**

by Lucius Complex

2

By the time Crowley admits defeat and throws down his napkin in acknowledgment to Aziraphale’s superior appetite night has well and truly fallen like a veil, and the kitchen table flickers with too many tea light candles and the half-picked containers of five different restaurants scattered between them. Aziraphale’s Chianti has long been drained dry; replaced with whatever half decent merlot had been lying around the shops.

Crowley had been disgusted to discover his angle selfishly and steadfastly _refusing_ to recreate his substantive rare wine collections, now lost to fire.

‘No I won’t. They’re natures have transformed, lost to the ether. It would be sacrilegious to resurrect them.’

‘It is _not_, you pedantic old fusspot. We could be toasting to Romanee Conti instead of sub-par merlot.’

‘You can’t possibly compare them,’ The angel cradles his crystal glass to him in both hands, as if to protect his drink from hurt feelings. ‘I happen to think it rather decent, for a brew less than a decade old.’

‘I’m not asking you to turn back time, angel, just snap your fingers and _recreate _the bloody things. The way you did with the books.’

‘Certainly not. We don't consume my books the way we consume this wine. And besides, I’d _know_ they're fake,’ the angel sniffs; and that was that. Although as a compromise, he keeps his glowering to a minimum when Crowley waves their 2012 merlot into a slightly better harvest.

‘You, my dear, are an atrocious old cheat.’

‘Raise my glass in Amen to that,’ the demon rolls his eyes with no small measure of relief. ‘I certainly couldn’t live like you. I’d die of boredom and thirst.’ Crowley might love his angel, but he wasn’t about to drink sub-par alcohol whilst waiting another two hundred years for Aziraphale’s cellar collection to build up again, flask by flask.

As acclimatized as he is to their differences Crowley still has occasion to despair of his angel’s dogged nature. As a rule, Aziraphael is never very fond of progress, unless it happens to be culinary in nature. In fact he was half certain they’d had this same argument before. It made him nostalgic for simpler times. Like the pre-Babylonian days, when they’d spent a good four decades travelling through the arid plateaus of Mesopotamia, ducking past pitched battles of feverishly warring tribes and trails of human bodies, and his job then had mostly consisted of Tempting one feudal overlord or another with delusions of grandeur until they decided to raise up an army and go loop off a few heads.

Then he’d go somewhere else, rinse and repeat. It was a good, easy job, and overlords always had the best wines.

That was until Aziraphale, then masquerading as a general for the Kingdom of Elam, had caught up with him and rather rudely thrown him into prison – there to cool his heels for a couple of years. By then Crowley had been sick of sleeping in ditches and tents and hadn’t minded putting his feet up in a nice stone cell for a bit. King Chedorlamer of Elam might not have much sense of humor, but he certainly did have a great deal of wine – the choicest which would somehow find their way to his cell every night, dragged by mice.

The smaller tribes were already nicely agitated, and the battle of Siddim had yet to take place – Crowley certainly felt justified that he could afford to take a short holiday. Until his angel had to ruin it all by busting him out, whether he liked it or not.

He’d been just experimenting with this sleeping thing that all the humans seem to enjoy so much, only to be rudely awakened by a loud crash. He’d looked up to see the door smoking from its hinges and all the guards asleep, and in strode Aziraphale, skirts flapping beneath his lightweight mail and an incandescent sheen on his forehead, burnished curls cockscrewing out in all directions from beneath a metal helmet. He’d carried a fierce expression and a sword in each hand and Crowley can remember like yesterday how his eyes had widened and his breath had caught in his throat; how he’d thought the angel _glorious._

‘Up, foulest Serpent!’ the Angel had snarled, throwing down one of his swords to clatter melodramatically at Crowley’s feet. They’d not been friends as such back then, no. More in the nature of… dutiful comrades.

‘Immutable heaven brings word that Hammurbi has made his pact of cooperation with Rim Sin I of Larsa. We must away under cover of night, where the great work awaits.’

Crowley slithered up and propped his languid body the wall. ‘Whatever for?’

‘Because the wine of Babylon flows free and maddens all-’ Aziraphale had hissed, doing, the demon had thought, a passable imitation of Crowley himself; ‘-and we need to be ready to do our _jobs_, Demon!’

‘Surely,’ Crowley yawned and scratched himself, ‘There’s a more appreciative audience out there for you to make these righteous proclamations against.’

‘I see what you are doing.’ The Angel folded his arms. ‘You are wasting my time and I-’

‘-in fact here’s an idea, Angel: why don’t you go there yourself?’

‘I will not!’ Aziraphale flustered hotly. He did everything hotly in those days too. 

Crowley had merely raised an indolent eyebrow whilst watching the vermilion flush climb up his adversary’s neck with no small fascination. With his golden skin and bright halo of hair, he rather looked like a lightbulb about to explode. 

‘Well there’s no _me_ without you, is there?’ Aziraphale finally burst out, exasperated. ‘We are irrevocably and terminally bound. And you simply must come with me to Ur, Demon, there are Events which _must_ unfold.’

For some reason there had been something that night in that cell, something in the Angel’s expression or perhaps his choice of words that had lingered under Crowley’s skin, rubbed against him differently from their previously interactions before. And well, perhaps Crowley had also been bored. Bored, and maybe if he was honest, which wasn’t very often, a little sick of talking only to mice.

He opened his mouth to say ‘alright’ but the angel had stalked back into the corridors without waiting for an answer. Typical, the demon had sighed. Aside from their brief interaction in the Garden, he’d only bumped into his angelic counterpart a handful of times and whilst cordial enough, they’ve not exactly gotten along.

Crowley himself wasn’t sure he’d be able to stomach working together. But Warfare had called, work to be done et cetera. And it had been such a nice day too.

Crowley pulled himself up and mournfully said goodbye to his flagon. He’d just worked it open too, no mean feat with half-chewed fingernails. The demon stretched until his bones popped, picked up his sword, and made his way past the sleeping guards. He strolled into the courtyard, a free man. The air was cool and dry against his skin with just a hint of the oncoming chill, and it was perfect. He had summoned a cloak just as Aziraphale came galloping up to him, the reins of a second horse in his hand.

‘Thank you,’ Crowley said politely, deciding for now keeping his distasteful opinion of horses to himself. 

‘Try to keep up,’ the Angel grunted in reply, before turning tails and galloping off.

The disgruntled demon beadily eyed the reins in his hands. The horse, a loathsome black beast with a star on his foreheard that reminded Crowley of Hastur, grunted warningly at him about getting any ideas.

_‘Ngk.’ _

Ah yes, the good old pre-Agreement days. It does make him nostalgic.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dipping my toes into a new fandom to see if we click. 
> 
> Say hi anytime! :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Nothing Much Changes**

by Lucius Complex

3

They had just ordered lunch at the Rits when predictably, the good-hearted bickering begins.

‘_You_ start.’

‘Ah, I think not. After you.’

‘But I asked you _first.’_

‘Definitely you first, I should think,’ Crowley says firmly, gesturing impatiently for the waiter to put down their plates and just _go already._

‘No, I believe _I_ asked the question first, therefore I-’

‘You thought of it first, angel, so you answer.’

‘My dear Crowley, you know this isn’t how it works!’ Aziraphel huffs, then let out a half shriek when the demon swats his hand away from reaching for his fork.

‘Don’t even think of distracting yourself until you answer your own question, angel. Now get on it.’

‘I need to _eat _before I can think!’

‘I swear I’ll vanish your plate. Get cracking.’

Aziraphale sucks his finger, a grievous look on his face._ ‘_You are just the most _unbelievable _demon.’

‘Exactly what it says on the tin, sugarpuff.’

Crowley grins sharply as he picks up his own knife and begins to cut up his blood-red steak into fastidious, bite-sized pieces. Glory, what a pair of infantile fuckwits they make. He’ll cherish it thoroughly till the end of days.

‘Besides, whatever can be so hard?’ the demon grunts. ‘It’s just retirement. Surely you’ve thought about it.’

‘Well I hadn’t, had I?’ Aziraphael complains. ‘I always thought the End was, you know, the End! And we’d all just go back upstairs and carry on like we used to, before -before there was a world,’ he finishes awkwardly. ‘The truth is, now that all this has come to pass, I’d actually hoped to pick your brain, my dear. You’ve always been the creative one between us, the one with all the mad ideas-’

_‘_Mad? I’m the one who’s _mad?_’

‘Oh hush. As I was saying, now that this non_-_ending has come to pass… and nothing’s happened and no one dead or discorporated… I find I actually haven’t the foggiest what to make of our freedom.’

Crowley takes a very careful sip of wine, the better to hide whatever his face might be revealing – not that he has any clue what that may be. He just knows not to under any circumstances, show it.

‘You could always just keep doing what you’ve always done. Potter on in your bookshop. Restore your cellars to its formal glory. Eat more ridiculous over the top pastries invented by Inspired chefs, and don’t think I never noticed how many of them opened within walking distance of your shop.’ 

_You could stay with me,_ he carefully doesn’t say. But Aziraphael doesn’t look remotely satisfied with this answer.

‘But that’s just it, Crowley. All this time, and it’s always just- well it’s always been a _job,_ hasn’t it? A disguise,’ the angel frets.

‘You love this life, angel. You made this life for yourself, and you’ve made yourself for this life. You deserve to keep it.’

‘Yes but to what _point?’_

Crowley swallows the fluttering pain that is currently trying to tie his throat into knots with tiny sips of red. His time with Aziraphael would always be pleasure-pain he knows, but since the Non-Apocalypse it’s increasingly been feeling like everything is twice the pain, twice the pleasure.

Twice the price to pay, if he screws up and chase the angel away before he can draw the net slowly close. Crowley finds himself hoping more and despairing more, and then backing off and swearing to pack up and disappear into the night for a few centuries, or until common sense and self-control slithers back into his spine, whichever happens first.

Only he never leaves. It’s a vicious cycle, and a particularly beastly one. 

‘Crowley my dear. What would _you_ do with retirement? If that’s even what we can call this- this nebulous twilight zone we find ourselves inhabiting.’

Hmmm. The demon stretches his feet out and folds his hands under his head, mulling at options. It wasn’t that he never thought about it. Oh, he’d dreamt of so many ways of spending the endless currency of years at their disposal. There are so _many options. _

‘Well. I miss seeding the stars. And I’ve never been to Iceland. Or for that matter South Asia. If I feel particularly ambitious I can always try to invent a new Sin, we’ve been making do with seven for a dismal number of centuries now and it’s starting to get quite repetitive.’ He sneaks a quick peek at the angel to gauge his reaction, who looks satisfyingly green about the gills.

The angel harrumphs and rather pointedly picks up his utensils, fierce eyes daring Crowley to keep him from his food.

‘Well, you should go, then. See the world.’

Despite these casual words he can see those ethereal blue eyes radiating stark disgust and disapproval at him. Crowley almost breaks into guffaws at the thought: Why the blaze would he bother to leave? His idea of heaven and hell was here in London, stuffed into a ridiculous beige suit and currently chewing carefully on a piece of buttered asparagus.

No, Crowley wouldn’t been going anywhere. Not whilst he can hoard away another hundred tiny memories, and then another hundred, like little pebbles he drops into the bottomless well of his famine. Pebbles to deceive himself into a sense of feeling full, in lieu of a real meal.

And even if they wouldn’t truly fulfil him, not ever, not even mentally: after all he’s had six thousand years to come to terms with constant hunger; he still wouldn’t miss a pebble. He’d not give up the opportunity to hoard a single grain of sand.

But he can’t say any of this for fear of upsetting their thrice-dammed balance, so instead he says:

‘And who’ll take care of my plants? Can’t trust you with em, you’ll spoil them rotten. I’ll come home to yellow spots and all sorts of exotic diseases.’

‘You’re the one dreaming about haring off to Asia, I rather think if anyone is coming home with an exotic disease it would be you.’

‘Oh for purgatory’s sake that was _one_ time, and it was a very specific assignment. I was told to bring a disease across borders, so I brought it on my own body. Got a commendation for my pains too.’

‘That was disgusting, my dear. As you well know.’

‘Yes, well. We can’t all be angels.’ There’s really only one angel in his life, and Crowley didn’t want it any other way. The angel wasn’t naïve of course, being as old as the beginning of time itself, but he’s always taken care to shield the vast bulk of his _demoness_ from Aziraphel. 

Except maybe for that one time in Egypt, when he’d been a wealthy landowner at Pelusium, and that of course had meant owning plenty of slaves, and of all the confounded luck one balmy evening had found Aziraphel calling on him out of the blue, only to freeze at the sight of Crowley surrounded by three naked, heaving bodies latched on to the demon, moaning and groaning and grinding.

Crowley still remembers like yesterday the look on Azraphael’s face as he delicately cleared his throat and ever so quietly, shut the door. Admittedly it wasn’t one of his finest moments, getting discovered like that. He’d not regretted it exactly, but still. 

Besides, Aziraphale had soon put a stop to his plans of toppling the nearby kingdoms via decadence and disease by making his way to Cambyses II and persuading the Persian king to raising an army - as well as several thousand cats. And then the crafty angel had driven these thousand cats to the gates of Pelusium – where the damn Egyptians and their cat-worshiping tendencies unspooled all of Crowley’s carefully spun and long-laid plans like so much rotten tread. The demon had ultimately found himself discorporated rather painfully, with a stake driven through his torso and his head scalped, left out in the sun as a meal for vultures and rats.

  
And Azirapled had watched the whole gory proceeding without a single twitch: in fact he’d been eating, the little feathered fiend. Really, Crowley had always thought it was all in all a rather extreme reaction for having offending his sensibilities _one time._ But that’s what you get for being one of Heaven’s lot: grudge carriers, the lot of them.

The angel wasn’t innocent of course; not in that fanciful and wilful way of mortals that is only the provenance of the very young and very artful. But still, after that rather mortifying episode Crowley had always made sure he finished up all his temptations and spreading of sin, has tied up any loose ends and was washed and showered and poured into new clothes by the time he allows the angel to come anywhere near his person.

‘Are you going to finish that?’ Aziraphale suddenly asks, and Crowley shakes off with a start and looks down at the half eaten meal he’d abandoned. He pushes the plate forward with teasing deliberation, watching the angel’s eyes widen with anticipation, darkening and dilating from pale blue into an opaque, out-worldly colour that Crowley secretly called _sea of_ _desire._

‘Be my guest, angel.’

Really, Aziraphale could do lust like no demon in hell. Lust, and vengeance.

It’s surely no surprise that he’s catnip for demons. Well, this demon. 

*


End file.
